Ok, we have checked out a few more channels.
I only saw one show for free on Vudu(Black Sails), and no free movies. I’ve noticed that a lot of dvd’s for sale nowdays also give you a copy on Vudu, but if I already own the dvd it’s more of a minor advantage.
Got the Amazon Prime free trial because they have a ton of shows and movies we like. However once we were signed in, most of the stuff we like is $1.99 per episode (to buy) or $2.99 to rent movies. That seems fairly high priced to us, plus we’re leery of “buying” streaming only content. Yes they have almost every season of most of our shows, but even $20 a season would be steep, and it costs much more than that. How often does Amazon Prime have sales, and do they have package deals for seasons of shows? Also it seems like they want the $100 subscription fee up front. That seems like a lot for the very little freebies we’re getting.
Netflix doesn’t have the huge amount of content that Amazon does but you only pay one fee and can watch whatever you want.
We’re happy to subscribe to Amazon because it also comes with free shipping on most items bought through their website – and we buy quite a bit of stuff over the course of the year. And they have a lot of streaming content not available on the other channels.
For current shows, you usually have to pay per episode or season – that’s how I watched Better Call Saul this year. But even paying $20 for the season was still costing me a lot less than a cable bill even when you add in the Amazon Prime fee and other subscriptions.
It is disappointing, how little of Amazon’s content is actually 100% free (although as noted elsewhere, the free shipping pretty much covers the cost of the subscription). We decided to give The Good Wife a try (6 years behind the curve), and have watched seasons 1 & 2, both entirely free. Also, their own developed content – Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle: both excellent, both free.
We use Netflix for House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Orange is the New Black: all free.
Oddly, I don’t think we’ve actually watched any movies.
Stick to the Prime section. There should be more than enough to enjoy for the trial period.
http://www.amazon.com/Prime-Instant-Video/b/ref=sd_allcat_aiv_piv?ie=UTF8&node=2676882011
How difficult, roughly, would you say it is to accrue 500 Bing Rewards points, and how many times do they allow you to apply the rewards thusly?
Well, Prime does get you a lot of good movies. I’ve been wanting to see Zero Theorem since it was released, and there’s a lot of other movies that I can watch free. We watched a very strange one called Frequencies last night unfortunately I fell asleep for about the middle third and will have to rewatch it. It was cool though.
And we did find Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, which I’ve heard about but haven’t seen, for free.
But yeah I am very disappointed that you don’t get more television for your $100 a year. They’re trying to get money from both the subscription model AND the per item purchases, which just doesn’t work for me. Charge me $50 more per year and let me watch what I want. Or hell, even $20 a month (broken into monthly payments), just because they have so much stuff that it’d be worth it. But for what they’re charging I’ll stick to Netflix and dvd’s. Going to cancel after the trial’s up.
I hope the back surgery helped. I can not risk the down time of six weeks for what they want to do to me. I use prime to save on delivery costs. I find it back saving to have heavy items on my door step, and it cuts down on exposure to inconsiderate people at the supermarket.
Than’t exactly what we do. We have Prime, and Hulu Plus with an Antenna. We buy a few shows we love every year like Walking Dead, Better Call Saul. We’ve never bought more than 4 and the price has never been more than $100 . . . for the year. Add the subscriptions and the content works out to about $25 a month.
Resurrecting this thread to give an update: about a month into life as a cord cutter, and my reaction is: this stuff is not ready for primetime.
My Tivo Roamio OTA loses internet connectivity every few days, and requires a power cycle to reconnect. Watching a streaming video usually means a pause for buffering at some point in the middle (at best), or complete freeze (at worst). Sling TV’s interface is complete crap – I’m constantly fumbling with the remote, trying to figure out which freakin’ button brings up the channel list.
I miss channel surfing – easily seeing what’s on (on other than the handful of OTA channels I receive). Sling has enough channels to warrant surfing, but…see above.
The good news is that over the air channel reception is perfect – beautiful crisp HD.
But I’m going to hang with it, and hope that things improve.
Have you tried a Roku? My internet connection is with AT&T and I only have buffering issues very, very rarely (and then only on Hulu Plus). I sort of miss channel surfing, but I do “surf” Netflix and Amazon movies… I have the Roku3.
The only local station I can pull in with my indoor antenna is PBS, which is fine with me.
I’ve got both. The Tivo on one input, primarily so we can record and time-shift OTA broadcast programs. It also has Netflix and Amazon links, so we stay on the Tivo input for those.
But Tivo doesn’t support Sling or HBO GO, so we kept the Roku, on the other input, for those.
The OP can get all his local NFL games via the OTA networks broadcasts. That’s one of the nice features of the NFL: All your local games are broadcast free over the air. Even the ESPN/NFL Network games (MNF/TNF) are simulcast on free OTA broadcast for local markets. Including preseason, regular season, playoffs and the Superbowl.
MLB, NBA and NHL, not so much. In fairness, the main reason the NFL can do this is because there are so few games. But they don’t technically have to, so it’s nice that they do. Not that it’s a charity endeavor, of course; it’s driven by self-interest. Still, pretty cool.
We don’t have cable of any kind. Been living with my Dearly Beloved™ for 7 years now. married for 5. No need- and no time- for cable. We can afford it, but really regard almost everything on the 41,000 channels as absolute pablum.
We get our t.v. through the air with a cheap digital antenna. The set does the “tuning” just fine.
We have Verizon DSL ( which is wicked fast ) for Internet. Don’t stream any shows, no Netflix or Hulu or somesuch accounts.
We both work in television, which may account for our distaste. You spend 10 hours a day staring at a t.v. monitor, the very last thing you want to do is come home and PAY TO DO IT SOME MORE.
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
Having said that, there is a handful of recent series I’d love to binge watch somehow. And some day, I will.